major reference

...with laughter—which, in some views, is itself a species of aesthetic interest—introduces a concept without which there can be no serious discussion of the value of art: the concept of
taste. If I am amused it is for a reason, and this reason lies in the object of my amusement. We thus begin to think in terms of a distinction between good and bad reasons for laughter. Amusement at...

...philosophy, aesthetics flourished, not in the works of the great philosophers, but in the writings of such minor figures as Baltasar Gracián, Jean de La Bruyère (who began the study of
taste that was to dominate aesthetics for a century), and Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon.

18th-century views

...enough that the application of the “mechanical” procedures was not literally “automatic” but was controlled throughout by something else—artistic discrimination, or
taste. One of the most respected attributes in the culture of the 18th century, “
taste” is an utterly individual compound of raw talent, imagination, psychological disposition, judgment,...